To David Wineberg:
I agree completely.
Fundamentalism is nothing but a camouflage.
Disrooted people are the best victims for fundamentalists of all types.
Hitler's party has been a collecting tank for many losers and criminals like himself.
As the new German president said last week: We need to make feel all people at home in our country wherever they come from.
Excluding people drives them straight away into the open arms of fundamentalists.
And he added at the address of all fundamentalists and extremists : Your hatred is our motivation.

A professional American soldier massacres 17 muslim civilians and all the talk is of mental illness. Some nut case in France kills 3 French soldiers and 4 Jewish civilians and all the talk is of fundamentalism. Weird.

One thing is for sure! Sarkaozy will reap rich electoral votes after this mayhem!
Much like George Bush who overnight became a knight in shining armour following the 9/11 tragedy!
But the big question remains why such horrific thiings happen?
Has any one in Washington or London Paris ever tried to find why such things happen!
Ask the Palestinian widows and orphans,the orphans in Afghanistan Iraq! Abugharaib Gaza Sabra Shatila mayhem!
No such questions are next to blasphemey!

Strange, I thought christianity was the religion of peace. The same religion that helped kill off 90% of the indigenous population of the new world. The same religion of the slave owners of the the new world. The religion of the crusades. The religion of Hitler.

Oh but that was all in the past and now christians are actual followers of the peaceful teachings of Christ, right? How pathetic.

Listen to your racist neo-european speech. 'We're good because of our god, they're bad because of their god'. Do you really think there's a connection between being a good person and the religion one follows?

Remember that your sad little racist comments say nothing about the groups you speak ignorantly about, but those same comments speak volumes about who you are. If you'd like I can describe your demographic back to you if you'd like.

To continue my previous comment I would say it's a shame that the police were unable to take him alive. Had he been alive he could have said WHO? he met in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why is it so important? He spent only four months in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the years 2010 and 2011. Within four months a man that is seasoned and trained enough to be able to hold dozens of hours in check police forces the best trained in France. Therefore a question arises: Best is the armed forces of France responsible for the fight are absolutely antiterroristres inneficaces OR Let the people he met in these two countries are people that should be quickly identified ...

There are two ways to prevent such tragedies. (1) Put a police officer behind every citizen to make sure they are not up to any mischief or (2) Treat the root cause which pushes people to such desperate acts. Since # 1 is not practical, why not consider # 2?

Merah claimed two grievances which motivated his attacks: revenge for Palestinian children killed by Israel; and France's military presence in Afghanistan. As news reports have sadly been reminding us on a weekly basis for the 45 years that Israel has been occupying Palestinian lands, Arab children have been killed in their thousands. I think that any one of those Jewish children that were killed in Toulouse is one death too many: but if we are to grieve for them, then shouldn't we grieve as well for the innocent Palestinian children who die in even greater numbers? Unless of course one believes that a Palestinian child is an animal, whereas a Jewish one is a god. Instead of France providing full political, diplomatic, economic, trade and military support to Israel why does it not put pressure on it to grant Palestinians their independence?

As for the second motivation, France's military intervention in Afghanistan, well, I don't remember Afghanistan having invaded France or attacked it. So what the hell is France doing there, occupying it with its forces and killing its people? Get the f**k out of there and spend the money on education and health and to fix your bankrupt economy rather than going and killing people who have done nothing to you.

Characteristically, Sarkozy's pathetic response has been to promise even more laws, some of which have little chance of ever being adopted, for example to turn anybody who visits a pro-Qaeda website as a criminal liable to jail. What next? A list of books and films we can't read and watch? And they say that it's the Taliban who are authoritarian!

Your argument then seems to be that a government should submit itsef to the demands of anyone willing and able to kill innocents. I am not saying that France should have a military presence in Afghanistan or that Israel's actions should be tolerated. Not at all. But your solutions to terrorism are essentially: 1) Watch every citizen or 2) submit to the demands of terrorists. Now, you phrased the second differently - you phrased it as "treat[ing] the root cause which pushes people to such desperate acts." But then you identify the criminals causes as France's support of Israel and of the occupation of Afghanistan.

But here's the rub - what would happen if, say, a French Jew were to shoot a group of citizens if the French government stopped supporting Israel? Well, then, we'd have to treat the root cause of that, wouldn't we? And what would the solution be? Well, for the French government to back Israel. Do you see the failure of the logic you've used? You've seemed to mistake "root cause" for "demands" What lead this person to commit these acts was not France backing Israel or France's involvement in the occupation of Afghanistan - many people in France feel that both are outrageous and should be ended. But why do those people not shoot people? What is it that caused this individual to act out violently where others do not? Identifying that is identifying the root cause and that is far more complex than instantly submitting to a set of demands.

Let me start from your last point and move up. Your question: "What is it that caused this individual to act out violently where others do not?" My answer: "A strong sense of injustice." Since the majority of the French people are European and Christian in origin, they don't care that much one way or another about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so it's up to a vocal minority to make its voice heard. And Merah is part of that vocal minority, just like the Jewish lobby represents a tiny fraction of the American population and yet holds disproportionate power and influence on the US government's polices because they are better organized and advocate strongly their political preferences. Now, pro-Israeli lobbies don't use force to further their aims not because they are less violent but because they don't need to NOW (remember how under the British Mandate they carried out terrorist acts?) Well, today it's the pro-Arabs and Muslims who carry out violent acts because that's all they have. Western powers won't listen to them, Arab governments are corrupt and do the West's bidding, so what is left? Violence. Always has been, always will be.

That is why, my solution, to treat the CAUSE and not the SYMPTOMS, is the best one. That doesn't mean "submitting to the demands" of any crazy group or individual that comes up with some fanciful ideas since even you agree that what is meted out to the Palestinians is unacceptable and you question France's presence in Afghanistan. If our pseudo-democratic governments had sensible and just policies (and supporting a racist and oppressive state like Israel cannot be considered as just or sensible - but then we supported apartheid South Africa, remember?)then we will pull the rug from under many would-be terrorists.

Will we eliminate them all? Of course, not, but at least let's not give them a reason. And for the time being the policies of the West give Al-Qaeda & Co ample reasons, and recruits, to strike.

There are parallels between this tragedy and the Sydney Street siege of 1911. Social outcast perpetrators, Interior Minister Guéant and Home Secretary Churchill on the scenes. Authorities caught by surprise. Fatalities and injuries on both sides.
In 1911 it was blamed on anarchists, whose leader "Peter the Painter" disappeared. In 2012 it is "Jihadists" whose ostensible leader was killed, but, who may have been guided by unknowns. M. Guéant seems to have made fewer mistakes than Mr. Churchill. Both failed the near impossible task of preventing the violence.
Can a repetition be prevented? and not just in France.

The raid did not do his job properly.
They just had to wait him going out of his home and then, use an electric gun and the whole strory would have took less than 5 minutes and it would have involed just a few policemen, without any gunfire or grenade or anything else. It's obviously a shame and a failure for the president who decided everything in that operation. Once again Sarkozy failed.

Mr Guéant said that “nothing whatsoever” suggested he was planning an imminent attack. Yet the number of Frenchmen returning from al-Qaeda camps with such high-level training is only “in single digits” reckons François Heisbourg, of the French Institute for Strategic Research.

Based on this, explusion from France for anyone returning from al-Qaeda camps with such high-level training should be a small number.

I am really surprised that no link is made between the profife of this murderer and the one of the norvegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who was islamophobic and a christian.

I am of the opinion that relegious or political beliefs or political are very much of a pretext in that kind of cases.

Franco-iranian sociologist interviewed by "libération" summed up "once they were nobody and even nothing in the face of society, and then they can assert themselves as supermen (in their own eyes)"
- "I' m saving Norway"
- "I' m putting France on its knees" ; "I am avanging palestinian children" etc...

If only we knew why he would do such a dastardly thing. Oh yeah, we could just stop ignoring the elephant in the room and believe him when he said he was trying to avenge the obscene number of killings in Palestine.

Reminds me of when the twin towers came down and bush came out and said the reason was because 'they' hated our freedoms. If I remember it correctly though, Bin Laden mentioned repeatedly on the taped messages he periodically put out that Palestine was one of the main cause of anger with the west.

Are we so naive to the forces of cause and effect or are we doing our best not to address the the issues at hand so as not to offend powerful interests?

As a side note I will point out that after three dark skinned soldiers were gunned down in the streets of France a few lines in the news were posted, but a day after some jews were killed the assassin was caught and soon after killed. If I were a cynical man I would say that not all lives in France have the same value. If one were to count the number of lines in international newspapers dedicated to each death one could even become a little jaded to how things really worked.

bin Laden was a devout Wahhabi and from Saudi Arabia. Though we have some accommodation with the Saudis, Wahhabi calls for the world to be Islam. Read it. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is a side show if one observes there are NO churches, Buddhist temples, Synagogues, or any but Muslim houses of worship allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Muslim countries of the region have slowly but surely driven out Christians, Copts, Baha'i, etc. For confirmation check out the population of NON-Muslims in the region in 1940 and now.
Not all Muslims take these positions, but too many do and now the population of Egypt, for instance, countenances the burning of Coptic churches, etc.

Disgusting. They were French Jewish children. A little girl had a gun put to her head at point blank range and was murdered for one reason. Because she was Jewish. She was not Israeli. Pure anti semitism. Making excuses for this behaviour is nauseating.

No need to get emotional/irrational about my comment. I don't recall trying to make excuses for anything - merely pointing out connections.

If you want to hear excuses then listen to American news agencies try to explain away the murder of sixteen Muslims in Afghanistan (mostly women and children) by a highly trained soldier.

If you want to hear excuses for the murder of Palestinians then listen to mark ragev propagandize away thousands of death (many of them children) whenever the idf decides to attack refugee camps.

But then again, the life a single jew, especially a young female blond one, is tragedy, whereas the murder of numerous Palestinian children is merely statistically acceptable collateral damage.

While I TOTALLY disagree with what the one lone man did in France, I believe him when he says he did what he did because of his convictions.

As an outside observer with no dog in this game I can see very clearly where this zero sum game is headed and it doesn't directly affect me, but I do hope that when the mighty idf rear their ugly vengeful head they don't drag the world into another global catastrophe.

SMISAC: for dog's sake, everytime a Palestinian child is killed by zionist settlers or their protectors the idf, it is precisely because they are Palestinian (yeah, I know, collateral damage). Shall is show you some b'tselem videos of the daily tragedies? But of course you have no doubt learned first hand of the treatment of Palestinian women and children when you did your tour of duty, no?

By your warped logic, revenge for Palestinian children should be carried out against the Israeli military. A little Jewish girl was neither Israeli nor a soldier. This is exactly the point. The target was Jewish and thus antisemitic. Trying to blame Israel just shows your underlying racist and bigoted attitudes.

As to the American soldier, I do believe that Hussein Obama criticized the act in the strongest terms and the man will stand trial. He may face the death penalty. Do you distrust the American legal system as well now? Don't tell me it's because the judges are Jewish and part of the world Zionist conspiracy. The elders of Zion for a little light reading?

And now dear sir to your favorite subject Israel. I do not know where you are from, but I cannot imagine many countries acting with the restraint that Israel does when attacked. Recently, over a period of several days Israel was bombarded by several hundred rockets from Gaza. A million civilians lived for a week in air raid shelters as in the blitz. The sole aim of the rocket fire was to cause civilian casualties. The targets were 100% civilian. The only reason that there were no Israeli casualties was due to Israeli ingenuity in building a defense system. Israeli reprisals were aimed solely at rocket teams. Only combatants. Israel never targets civilians unlike the Hamas terrorists. Of course because of your antisemitic traits you won't accept this argument .

Go on, delude yourself into thinking there was no connection between the incident in France and the ongoing murders of civilians in Palestine. Makes no difference to me. But I do think that everytime the idf murders Palestinians, jews the world over are put at risk. Again, that makes absolutely no difference to me. Beleive it or not I lost no sleep over the France incident - if I lost sleep everytime an innocent child (of any ethnicity) died I would be very very tired.

Ah, I see by your use of Obama's middle name that you are, no doubt, one of those 'Obama is a crypto-Muslim' conspiracy theorists. Funny that. Just goes to prove what a nutter you are and the irrelevancy of your pathetic 'everyone-is-out-to-get-us and is an antisemite pouting.

Oh yeah, to your last point, I think we all know that the real reason no colonists were killed in Palestine is because the weapons used by the Palestinians are ineffective. Or are you trying to have us believe that the iron dome was 100% effective? If not, how many settlers did the earth-shattering Palestinian missiles manage to terminate? And in 'retaliation', how many Palestinian children were murdered this time because they were being used as shields? On that point, how will we ever know if that blond girl in France wasn't being used as a shield by your rabbi?

When nearly 70% of Muslims believe that their poverty is caused by the intentional and direct action of the west then you start to realise that they will believe anything rather than accept that their failure is self inflicted. I often wonder when I look at the neighbourhood where I live in Denmark at the good housing, the excellent services, the community that is decent, prosperous, caring honest and industrious that this can be the subject of such hatred. The difference is that in Northern Europe they discovered the reality of personal responsibility and every action is governed by that individuals decision that it is correct and right based on their own positive choice, not some mythical superior being. Though broadly secular the model can be considered the Prostestant Ethic and it works. The Muslims in France do not see the chance that they have been given to get educated, learn the language and adopt the French culture as that is the country in which they have chosen to live. Education represents the future for all countries but the number of Muslims in Universities is low and their overall attainment is poor especially in sciences. It cannot be defective DNA but the faith that supresses their chance in life. They are absolutely bound to accept the Koran as being the precise word of Allah, indeed to question any word therein is apostasy, which has unfortunate consequences! The Koran states unquestionably that the world is 6000 years old, there will not be one Muslim who will respond to this statement to say otherwise, in spite of evidence to the contrary.20 million(?) who cannot say yes that is a bit of an error! Wait and see.

You use the terminology colonists and Palestine when referring to Israelis being attacked across an internationally recognized border of the State of Israel inside the State of Israel. This state is accepted or recognized by the Palesinian Authority, most of the world and most of the Arab nations. Thus you place yourself roughly in line with Iran or the Islamic Jihad (hardly a surprise). Where did you say you were from? The areas disputed for your information are the West Bank and the Golan.

As to your disappointment regarding the lack of Israeli casualties. This was due as you rightly say, to Palestinian incompetence on the one hand, the 90%+ success rate of the iron dome system and a little old fashioned luck. Sorry. Also try and be precise. What were fired were rockets not missiles. It's good to be accurate. Lastly, to suggest that the blond girl was used as a shield by her father to save himself is another example of your depravity. Shame on you. Would you use your child as a human shield?

Fundamentalism has nothing to do with it. Merah was an absolutely typical displaced youth. Of Maghreb descent, he got into petty crime - shoplifting - as an unemployable teenager, and remained unable to ever get work, like literally millions of his peers. He tried the safe route - joining the army for a solid lifetime - but the army rejected him too - because he had a record! Too dangerous to give a gun to! So he turned to the only organization that would take him. He trained to kill, and he came back and killed - soldiers above all.
There are millions like him that France refuses to address. They need acceptance, but the French government is all about suppression. So it will happen again.

Some truth. French passports prevent immigration controls. One can blame the government. then again, who is not integrating, the native population or those from Islamic backgrounds? Imposing prayer by taking over roads does not show an attempt to integrate on FRENCH terms!

For the record, I watched the Foreign Legion commandant say Merah was not acceptable because of his record. On the France 2 news at 8 on Wednesday. If he resigned "of his own volition", he was asked to.

Yes, I know. Islamist ideology has special appeal to those disaffected population. Without that dangerous ideology though this atrocity would not have taken place. Please also note that it is rumoured to be his brother who was the brain behind this jihadist attack. According to the killer's neighbour (who filed complaint and warning about his dangerous activities to the local police who chose to ignore them) his brother Abdelkader Merah travels around the world recruiting potential jihadists and organizing these missions. Your blame on the society is misplaced, in my opinion, and will NOT prevent future attacks.

Fundamentalism has everything to do with it. They cater to those who are marginalized for sure, however, fundamental Islam is ready to take them and brain wash these people. We need to say like it is: Islamists fundamentalists are a menace to the world as we know it.

I agree completely.
Fundamentalism is nothing but a camouflage.
Disrooted people are the best victims for fundamentalists of all types.
Hitler's party has been a collecting tank for many losers and criminals like himself.
As the new German president said last week: We need to make feel all people at home in our country wherever they come from.
Excluding people drives them straight away into the open arms of fundamentalists.

And the president also addressed to all types of fundamentalists : Your hatred is our motivation.

There are those who give, but don't want others to give . . . that person's average. There are those who give, and want others to give . . . that person's good. There are those who don't give, but don't mind if you give . . . that person's bad. Then, there are those who don't give, and don't want others to give -- that person's downright evil!

In my post to the original article when the shootings first happened I suggested taking the culprit out the back and putting a bullet in him. That is what they did. Well done. Let's mourn his victims, care for the families and move on.

Hi,
Murders in the Midi-Pyrénées. First and foremost my condolences to those affected. Again we have a standard pattern, a young petty criminal, multicultural decent, flirts with Islamic ideology, visits Pakistan, joins al-Qaeda. In retrospect is one more wiser but have not the authorities noticed such patterns?

A very Long time ago, I studied Albert Camus's L'Etranger. In French, "étranger" can mean: "foreign", "overseas", "unknown", "extraneous", "outsider", "stranger", "alien", "unconnected". Our World is one of more than 7b Souls. Migration has commingled our Societies to an unprecedented Level and this Degree of Commingling is surely the New Normal. The Problem is that the FAT TAIL in a World of 7b Souls is a very long one. The risks now lie with these Lone Individuals who stay beneath the Radar until they pop over it with devastating Effect.
Aly-Khan Satchuhttp://www.rich.co.ke
Nairobi

Get real: The asassin is - sorry was a semite. Why do you say he is anti-semite? You must be living in the US, where people don´t know that Arabs and Jews are both semites - cousins, which both believe in an eye for an eye. Now we can expect that Israel will bomb Gaza to kill 40 Palestinian children. Isn´t that the ratio Israel operates with when pursuing its state sponsored terrorism?

Yeah! That's why the US spent countless lives and treasure in defending you....and would do so again, if the chips were down. Would you?
This has less to do with Europe and the US. It has to do with a rush to judgement that this killing spree was the work of neo-Nazi's, or what have you. The world should be willing to recognize that radical Islam is horrendously evil and violent.

The vast majority of Jews were born in Muslim countries and forcibly thrown out.
There were as many if not more Jews thrown out of the Muslim countries from 1948 -51 than the claimed number of Palestinian refugees.
There are virtually no Jews left in these Muslim states. There were millions.
By accepting partition we absorbed these Jews and grew a state where 17% of our population is Arab.
One more point. There is virtually no emigration of Israeli Arabs. There is a massive one from the erstwhile Palestine.
The Christian population in the erstwhile Palestine has been decimated by emigration. I wonder why?
Who colonizes?
Who allows its citizens to be at peace with one an other?
Who terrorizes?
Who will twist any fact to 'bash the Jews'?

You're missing my point, I don't agree with either of their actions, but you're naive to say the world should "recognize that radical Islam is horrendously evil and violent". Anyone who murders innocent people (let alone children) is evil. But if you want to give your "armchair" analysis of how you justify your double standards, be my guest.

Look at what is happening in France: While this madman was only killing soldiers descended from N-Africa, most likely muslims, there was not much of an outcry in France. Now, after killing Jews, you see the reaction. Mary le Pen points a finger at whom? The muslim immigrants in France and their offspring in I don´t know how many generations. Yes, there is antisemitism in France today, but it is mostly directed against people of Arab descent not Jews. And this is not semantics - this is enlightenment. Welcome back to the Middle ages!

I don't agree with their actions either. However, I will justify my "double standard" (as you call it) by saying that one was mentally unstable or traumatized while the other was not.....unless radicalism made him so. In which event, I rest my case. BTW, my analysis in not that of an armchair analyst.

Odd that you choose not to look at the leadership of jews in the middle east and not see how they look nothing like the other middle easterns around them. Perhaps your lieberman would mind taking a DNA test to see just how much middle eastern blood runs through his veins. You'd probably find him to be pretty slavic.

Your comment will only work on American evangelicals and zionists, but the rest of us can see the reality with our own eyes and draw our own conclusions.

The death of children in the Gaza stip in not I believe an intentional act however if the people of Gaza are so stupid as to fired indiscriminate rockets into Israel hoping to obtain a response they will get it. By insuring that their rockets are fired from civilian areas they get the results they want so that they can then gnash their teeth and wail.
I still remember the throngs of Palestinines clebrating 9/11. It is a sad faith that imprisons its unfortunate people.

The death of children on the Gaza strip, although a crime commited from a remote aircraft is still an intentional act of terror punishable by the international tribunal on war crimes in the Hague. It is not allowed to punish civilians in an indiscrimnate way like that. It is not an excuse that those who pressed the button didn´t face their victims as they pronounced their death sentence. Israel as a state is commiting state sponsored terror acts, sponsored by the US government. The US government however does not acknowledge the juristiction of the international court on war crimes in the Hague over US citizens. I don´t think Bibi can ever go to Europe, since he might be arrested, if he does, and made stand trial for his terror acts. I think Germany is an exception and would be a safe heaven for him, since the Germans and the Israelis have a special relationship.